Various Artists - Cryosphere

Glacial Movements

Places that man has forgotten ... Icy landscapes ... Fields of flowers covered eternally with ice ... Icebergs colliding amongst themselves ... The boreal dawn that shines upon silent white valleys in the Great Northern lands ... an explorer lost among the Antarctic glaciers looking for the way home ... The cold and silent night that falls upon the glacial valleys ... creatures that look for shelter from the Great Northern cold ... Glacial Movements is a label born to describe and spread these thoughts/images through sound.

'CRYOSPHERE is a musical journey that transports the listener into glacial and unexplored lands where icebergs collide and where everything is frozen'

Closing the Eternity just released a 7" on Drone records and now they're back on this sampler. The vibraphone makes the atmosphere sometimes a bit surreal - like wandering through a Dali-painting. Even though they are from Siberia, the track has a feel of 'Australia in winter'.

We know Northaunts work from a.o. the Canadian label Cyclic Law (where it also can be very cold). While listening, I sometimes had to turn my head to identify the exact sound I was hearing. This is a very good example of a true glacial soundscape.

Tho-so-aa does what he does best. This track would perfectly fit on either 'index 1.0 coma' or on 'minus' - a deep threatning drone combined with slowly evolving arpegiators / sequences in the backgroound.

The first new name for me is Lightwave with 'Proxima Thule'. A gorgeously manipulated atmosphere is created by these two guys. It holds the middle between a soundscape (quite some texture) and a drone (the more minimal approach towards ambient). This could be called an example of dronebient; At points it is icecold, at other moments warm and compassionate.

TUU I only knew from the sampler 'Twilight Earth' and exactly that quite known serie is what you have to expect from this sampler. Albeit (offcourse) that the twilight earth series was a lot warmer.

Troum makes their presence with 'Glascei' and what a beauty this is. They seem to be a bit more silent then what we're used from them, but the tension in this track is amongst the best we've ever heard from them.

Aidan Baker uses only a guitar and even though a guitar (which is the only soundsource he uses) is quite a warm instrument, his track perfectly fits the glacial atmospheres.

Netherworld - from what I've understood the man behind this release - is also a new name for me musically. You can position it somewhere between the coldness of Northaunt and the ambient from TUU. With a little less reverb the track would be even colder, nevertheless it fits very well on this sampler.

The CD closes with Oophoi, the third new name for me. A little bit of the same 'problem' as with Netherworld: A little less reverb/fx would have added to the atmosphere. Despite that a great track with (for me) the atmosphere of standing on the tundra when the first snow of the year is blown over the earth, creating snowhills as it settles around boulders in the soil.

'Cryosphere' is a CD-r which is professionally copied and printed and that's the only negative aspect I can think of. It should have been a pressed CD. Because like icebergs, CD-r's don't have eternal life ...

With these artists you can't go wrong, so the sampler is an absolute must have if you like ambient, drones and minimal experiments. It plays for the full 80 minutes and - even though it is very hard to make a good sampler - this one worked out perfectly!